[justin_kempton]

As a parent of Autistic child, I would argue it is a correlation. It only takes a few incidents of your child running off without interest in returning by your calling to him, to make you a helicopter parent. It's also true that since your child has no interest in playing with other kids, and you are trying to teach survival and social skills, you end up spending far more time with your child than the typically developing kid.

And it is further true that in social situations the anxiety level of the autistic child increases, as does the parent, and so people viewing the situation might be biased to see a highly anxious parent with a spoiled kid, and assume the causation.

My kid loves playing in dirt, he also loves to track it into the house, no-matter how many times you tell him. We live with dirt, and autism. My kid is also a genius, so there are good things about it also.